Consumer finance needs better moralsDrawing moral lines in our rough-and-tumble capitalist system can be hard. But it should not tax too many ethical muscles to set aside some protections for trusting, unsophisticated borrowers of modest means. That is, unless you’re a politician working on behalf of predatory lenders. And it’s amazing how many politicians do, making the recent successes of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seem all the more miraculous. The CFPB was creat...

Give a book for ChristmasAs Christmas approaches, the shopping mall can become a shopping maul. One of the ways of buying gifts for family and friends, without becoming part of a mob scene in the stores, is to shop on the Internet. However, for many kinds of gifts, you want to be able to see it directly, and perhaps handle it, before you part with your hard-earned cash for it. One gift for which that is unnecessary is a book. Books are ideal Christmas presents from th...

Leaves still have some use after fallEvery time my four-year old sons pass a pile of leaves they look up at me excitedly with a lilt in their voice. “Mom, it’s still fall!” they exclaim with wonder as they jump or kick their way through the crunch and squish of the pile. Kids seem to understand the magic of fallen leaves. Adults tend to see leaves as something to gather into a trash pile. But children have a way of reminding adults of the things we’ve grown to overlook. A few day...

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Meredith Martin-MoatsThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

Winter weather need not isolateLITTLE ROCK —- Once again, we have seen the wild weather swings in Arkansas that often mark the late weeks of fall. With our state getting its first full taste of winter last week, I want to recap how inclement conditions are handled in state government. We always strive for a careful balance between preserving the services your tax dollars pay for while also protecting the safety and well-being of our state employees. When my office announced...

Stadium debate: times, tradition, change University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long’s announcement last week that the Razorbacks will play only one game at Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium for the next five years – with no guarantee of any games after that – was a big deal. It was a big deal because the Razorbacks have been playing games there since the stadium opened in 1948. With a capacity of 54,120 and assuming the vast majority of attendees are from this state, when th...

Fleeing TV for good reasonMarketing surveys now show that when Americans come home from work, more folks turn on their computers than their television sets. That is a first. The reason is twofold: First, you can create your own world on your PC, and second, TV is awful. Flat-out awful. For years, television has been losing viewers because the product, generally speaking, has collapsed. Reality TV has destroyed the tube. Cheap, mindless shows featuring people who should...

State to get less tax funds this yearLITTLE ROCK — Budget officials revised their economic forecast for the current fiscal year, and now predict that state government will collect 1.7 percent less in tax revenue than it did last year. The state will still generate sufficient revenue so that all state agencies can meet their budgets. It does reduce the amount of anticipated surplus that is predicted to be available at the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30, 2014. For the fir...

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State Capitol Week in Review The Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

Volunteer in your communityThe holidays are often a time when many families have a greater sense of helping those in need. But in Arkansas, we can boast that our citizens donate an enormous amount of their time year round. So much so that our state budget would be greatly impacted if it wasn’t for the generosity of our citizens. According to the 2012 Economic Impact of Arkansas Volunteers Report, an astounding 595 thousand Arkansans donated their time in some capacity. ...

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Arkansas House of RepresentativesThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

Fatherly advice times a millionWhen I was around 17, my father gave me a piece of advice. I didn’t know it at the time — sitting there waiting for the traffic signal to change at the intersection of the Martha Mitchell Expressway and Blake Street in Pine Bluff — but the brief admonishment would have profound consequences for my life. As Thanksgiving is the one day each year we’re almost legally obliged to ponder that for which we are thankful, this seems as good a time as a...

Power of the unseen governmentCan you remember your first real job and how much you were paid for doing it? Well, I can, almost as though it was yesterday. It was chopping cotton for 10 hours a day in a little community called Olyphant, Jackson County, which is just north of Possum Grape, where my folks lived at the time. The going rate was $4 per day. I lasted four days. When I got paid and had those 16 brand new one dollar bills I thought I was rich, which sounds better ...

The tradition of Little Rock Hogs gamesGrowing up in Arkansas, it was a given that I would be a Razorback fan. Although my parents are from Georgia, they moved to Fayetteville to work at the University of Arkansas for Campus Crusade for Christ after they graduated from college. By the time I was born they had transferred to Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, but calling the Hogs was already a family tradition. The love for the Hogs went from the abstract to the concrete when m...

Removing some of the waste from collegeThe Arkansas Razorbacks lost to both Mississippi schools this year in football, but at least the state leads in another, more important area: the number of adults age 25-64 with college degrees. The bad news is that there are 47 states to go. At 21 percent, Arkansas ranks ahead of only Mississippi and West Virginia, according to the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey. Washington, D.C., whose football team also has had a disappointi...

Prospects grow dimmer for 2013 farm billOne of the casualties of the do-little 113th Congress will be the 2013 farm bill, which is two years overdue. Without action, parts of the law will revert to the original 1938 and 1949 versions, resulting in milk prices as high as $7 a gallon. A conference committee has been trying to work out a compromise between a Senate farm bill and what the House passed in two bills. Reports indicate the committee is getting nowhere, though certainly not ...

Letter to the editor (Dec. 4, 2013)Every Day is Veterans Day Commendations are due to those who planned and participated in the Veterans Day activities in Russellville this year. The Program at the Russellville High School was honoring and meaningful to the day. A flawless musical presentation by the choir is a lasting memory. Around noon Mayor Eaton hosted a program at the depot park which was equally patriotic and heartfelt for the audience. The late afternoon parade conclude...

A challenge to our beliefsDepressing news about black students scoring far below white students on various mental tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological spectrum have long ago developed their different explanations for why this is so. But both may have to do some rethinking, in light of radically different news from England. The November 9th-15th issue of the distinguished British magazine ”The Economist” reports that, among chil...

Will Americans pay for US-made?Wow, this T-shirt costs only $8. Great color. Problem is, your finger could punch a hole through it. In most Americans’ shopping experience, colors change and styles come and go, but there’s one constant: low quality and a sweatshop-country label. Lot’s been said lately about a flickering comeback in American apparel manufacturing. Wal-Mart vows to raise its meager buying of American-made products by $50 billion over the next 10 years. America...

Community, self-sufficiency, and lots of potatoesThe Avilla/Zion Community Garden won’t end hunger, stop childhood obesity, reform welfare, clean up the environment or reinvigorate the American community by itself. But it’s a start. The garden, which rests on land owned by Zion Lutheran Church in the Saline County community of Avilla, allows anyone to sign up to plant in a four-foot-by-12-foot raised bed for free. Expert volunteers including the garden’s founder, Bruce Schrader, grow seed be...

Setting our megasitesLITTLE ROCK — Arkansas must use every available tool at our disposal to highlight our state’s economic advantages in a competitive global marketplace. Companies looking to call Arkansas home need and want easy access to the information that can immediately place us in contention for potential projects. By identifying the right sites, we demonstrate to major employers that Arkansas can handle large industrial development rapidly. This past week...

Is it ‘if’ or ‘when’ Hogs leave LR?LITTLE ROCK — The University of Arkansas’ decision to further reduce the number of football games it plays at Little Rock should come as no surprise; the road toward last week’s announcement started being paved before Interstate 540 was paved in the 1990s. The question now is whether, or when, central Arkansas will lose the games altogether. In a sense, the state of Arkansas has shrunk since the University of Arkansas played its first game at ...

It’s the end of an eraSometimes the end of an era can be a very sad thing, especially if it marked the end of a very special time in your life. Such was the case for me when I learned that back on Dec. 12, 2009, the Roy Rogers Museum in Branson, Mo., closed its doors for good. If you are less than 50 years of age you probably won’t remember, or relate, to what I am going to say, but I hope you take a stroll with me down memory lane. For most of us in the older gene...